Weare What We

" WeAre What We Eat Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans Donna R. Gabaccia . Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College Mangiando, ricordo: All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Dedicated to Tamino, Second printing, 2000 Illustrations by Susan Keller my German,speaking, ltalo,Polish,American child, Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data who eats Ethiopian and cooks Cuban Gabaccia, Donna R., 1949- We are what we eat : ethnic food and the making of Americans I and who grew up with this book Donna R. Gabaccia. , p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-94860-2 1. Food habits-United States. 2. Ethnic food industry-United States. 3. Ethnic attitudes-United States. 4. United States Social life and customs. I. Tide. GT2853.U5G33 1998 394.1'2'0973-dc21 97-52712 Ethnic Entrepreneurs • 65 bananas, from the very same stores. The businessmen of enclave commu nities soon brought the products of mass manufacturers in far-off locations to Locke and to the Lower East Side. Eventually, too, they would deliver foods of Chinese and Jewish eaters to consumers of other cultural back grounds. The relationship of enclave businessmen and ethnic consumers was usually a close one, and it supported a culture of business quite unlike that of America's growing corporations. But conflict abounded. Ethnic enclave businesses competed intensely among themselves, as driven by profit mo tives as any other businesses in the United States and as vulnerable to the fickleness of their customers. Enclave consumers provided a rather fragile Ethnic Entrepreneurs financial foundation for ethnic businessmen, who, like many other Ameri cans, desired security and upward mobility. The unpredictability inherent in enclave markets repeatedly encouraged small businesses to look farther afield, beyond the boundaries of ethnic communities, for a wider market of In 1915 the small Chinese community in Locke, California, supported 6 more diverse consumers. restaurants, 9 grocery stores (two with their own slaughterhouses), a flour mill, and numerous boarding houses-all run by Chinese businessmen selling to Chinese consumers.' In 1899 the much larger Jewish Lower East Few saw this fragility in 1900. Lacking cosmopolitan palates, American Side in New York City boasted 140 groceries, 131 kosher butchers, 36 consumers at the tum of the century bought much of their food from bakeries, 9 bread stands, 14 butter and egg stores, 24 candy stores, 7 coffee entrepreneurs "of their own kind." Ethnic and regional food cultures cre shops, 10 delicatessens, 9 fish stores, 7 fruit stands, 2 meat markets, 10 ated quasi-monopoly markets for cultural insiders. In these markets, busi sausage stores, 20 soda water stands, 5 tea shops, 11 vegetable stores, 13 nessmen needed a secure and loyal clientele more than large amounts of wine shops, 15 grape wine shops, and 10 confectioners. Here, too, Jewish capital. While it was hard to succeed for long in the business of food businesses produced and sold to Jewish customers.2 Descriptions like these purveyor, it was not at all difficult to get started. Thousands of humble suggest how important consumption was becoming, even among cultural immigrant and minority entrepreneurs did so. conservatives like new immigrants and the rural eaters of the South and At the beginning of the chain were immigrant farmers. Often, they had Southwest. The desire for the familiar provided the foundation for busi introduced crops new to the United States in order to eat, and to sell, nesses in these enclaves, and those businesses in tum made culinary con foods familiar in far-off homelands. When Elise Waerenskold arrived in servatism possible. Women like Mary Antin's mother turned to them in Texas in the 1850s, for example, she reported unhappily that she had been large numbers for the familiar ingredients which enclave businessmen, not unable to buy seed for "any kind of cabbage or cauliflower, kohlrabi, Swed distant corporations, best understood. ish turnips, or French turnips (botfeldtske)." She advised prospective Nor As impressive, extensive, and complete as these lists of ethnic busi wegian immigrants to bring seeds with them. In a later letter she asked a nesses seem, their self-sufficiency and economic isolation nevertheless friend to send fruit pits, and in 1870 she instructed another to bring trees proved transitory. Already in 1890, Antin's father had probably bought the along for her. She requested empress, bergamot, and gray pear trees; glass "little tins that had printing all over them," as well as the queer, slippery and pigeon apple trees; green and St. Catherine's plum trees; and cherry 66 • We Are What We Eat Ethnic Entrepreneurs • 67 trees. She promised to pay for the transportation of Norwegian gooseberry In California alone, Chinese immigrants created a market for almost 35 and currant bushes. By then, Warenskold was already successfully raising million pounds of imported rice: 3 2 million pounds came from China, the cabbage and cauliflower absent in her early days in Texas) the remainder from Hawaii. As late as 1932, Japanese in Hawaii still pur Agricultural innovation by immigrant eaters was even more pro chased 158,800 pounds of umeboshi (red-pickled plums) valued at $5,460 nounced in the West, which by the end of the nineteenth century had and 98,623 pounds of fu (gluten cakes) for $17,259 .71talians in California become the center of American agriculture. In Hawaii, Chinese rice grow created a strong market for Mediterranean products: in 1879 the state ers imported familiar fish varieties from Asia in order to stock local streams imported 4 million gallons of wine; 140,000 cases of sparkling wine; and irrigation ditches. One farmer-Look Sing-introduced an Asian 500,000 gallons of brandy; 1,500 tons of figs; and 300,000 gallons of olive shellfish that was popularly used in important festival dishes in China and oil.8 By 1930, importers of green chile from Mexico included the Arthur was not available in the New World. In California, Japanese farmers intro Commission Company in Milwaukee; Albuquerque's Mercantile Com duced Napa cabbage and the radishes of their homeland. Felix Gillet pany; the Gebhart Chili Powder Company in San Antonio; the Ruther introduced soft-shelled walnuts, and Louis Pellier imported prune plum ford Chile Company in Kansas City; La Mexicana in San Francisco; cuttings, both from their native France. Italians in the Santa Clara valley McCormicks' Spice Company in Baltimore; and Jose La Llomera of continued to cultivate prickly pears (popular with Sicilians) until the NewYork.9 1940s; Sal LoBue believed his grandfather had first introduced them. Not Not surprisingly, this sector of American food trade was dominated by far from LoBue's farm, Santo Ortolano claimed to have introduced broc ethnic businessmen, who best knew consumer tastes and the place to coli, an Italian favorite, in 1902. "No one liked broccoli for a long time," purchase the desired products. As early as the 1880s, Chinese importers in Ortolano noted. Ortolano also grew the long, giant squashes known in San Francisco organized a Chinese Chamber of Commerce to keep abreast Sicily as "guguzz"; these were candied by immigrants for incorporation in of customs and tariff regulations affecting their trade; they incorporated in festival pastries.4 1909. During the same years, grocers and wholesale groceries operated by Everywhere, too, immigrant farmers sold surpluses of these culinary Germans and other Central Europeans dominated food importing from oddities, thus becoming truck gardeners for their urban countrymen. Ital Europe.10 The 27 importers listed in the 1906 San Francisco Directory ians in the Greenbush section of Madison remembered ordering tomatoes reflected the range of the town's eating communities by that time: Ger from two old Sicilian truck farmers, who "delivered to our backyard, usu man, German Jewish, Italian, French, Japanese, and Slavic importers out ally in quantities of five to ten bushels every day."5 More often, truck numbered those with English-origin or ethnically unclear surnames. farmers organized urban markets to sell their wares. Mexican farmers near Even relatively small grocers often used personal connections to import San Antonio set up their market in the Military Plaza, where a visitor in and then sell small quantities of local homeland specialties. These ven 1897 described how "the green of the big stacks of watermelons foils the tures did not always work out for the best. In Brooklyn, one small-scale yellow of carrots, and is shaded off by the paler green of the cabbage importer and grocer accidentally split open a barrel of olive oil during its mountains ... The dull red and clear white onions, the pink radishes, pale transport from basement storage to the family's flat; his daughter recalled cantaloupes, carmine tomatoes and brown potatoes."6 In Denver, Italian seeing "a great oil river ... run down the stairs and spread in a vast oily truck farmers peddled their produce door to door, while in San Francisco, smear across the linoleum of the lower floor." This unfortunate incident Italian commission agents organized Colombo Market in 1874 to connect quickly terminated the family import business. 11 the many Italian farmers and consumers of this growing city. San Francisco's Domingo Ghirardelli had better luck. He began life in a What could not be grown locally could be imported-albeit at a price. Genovese family of pastry makers and spice importers, and first practiced Ethnic Entrepreneurs • 69 his importing and candy-manufacturing skills in Peru. Around the middle import plum tomato seeds. Together they began raising and eventually of the nineteenth century, after moving to San Francisco, Ghirardelli canning this popular variety of tomatoes in California, shipping to eastern continued to import spkes, while beginning to grind spices and chocolate consumers.

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